In The Eye of the Beholder
When I was a child living in Thailand with my parents, I loved to go to the beach. Thailand has beautiful beaches with sand that is like fine white powder and crystal clear turquoise waters. Because most of these beaches border the Gulf of Siam, they are protected from the open waters of the ocean. The waves gently lap the shoreline, rising and falling with the tides… leaving beautiful, colorful seashells that just beg to be collected. I love to walk along the shore… wade in the tide pools… and play in the warm tropical waters.
Foreigners along the beaches always seem to attract salespeople… and it was no different when we went to the beach. All along the shoreline where the cabins and hotels were, there were people selling things… everything from beach balls to jewelry. The tables I enjoyed visiting most often were those that sold semi-precious gemstones. On simple tables, these salespeople had rows and rows of beautiful gems that glistened in the sunlight. My favorite stone was the goldstone. When a goldstone is in the shade, it looks like a simple amber stone. But when it is in direct sunlight, it sparkles like holiday glitter. In the strong tropical sun of Thailand it flashed with fire and I was enchanted. That was a stone that I just had to have for my own. (P)
When I turned fifteen, my parents offered to give me some jewelry… a set of earrings and a pendant. They would let me select the gemstone myself… as long as it was a semiprecious stone. I, of course, selected the goldstone and I would not … could not… be dissuaded. My parent purchased the gemstones and took them to a jeweler, who thought these foreigners were crazy. Why would anyone put a stone worth twenty-five cents in a setting valued at several hundred dollars? But this is the jewelry that I have most often worn in my life… and every time I touch them, they remind me of the beaches in Thailand. So, who is crazier… the jeweler who wanted to put a topaz or amethyst in this beautiful setting… or the young woman who wanted to carry a piece of her childhood and those special memories with her wherever she went? (P)
How do we learn what is truly valuable in life? Isn’t its value truly in the eyes of the beholder? I am holding a piece of rock in my hand… the same piece that I showed to the children earlier. It is pyrite… which is also known as fool’s gold. It is called fool’s gold because it looks like gold. It glitters like gold. It is found within rock, like gold. But, unlike gold, it is totally worthless. Yet, through the centuries, many people have been fooled by its appearance. How do we learn what is truly worthy of our attention… worthy to be the focus of our desire… and a goal that we strive for? When we are confronted by two different options in life, how do we know which is truly valuable… and which, like this piece of rock, is just fool’s gold? How can we tell the difference between those things which look valuable… and those things which truly are valuable?
In both of our texts today, we are confronted with stories that, at face value, do not make any sense. In our gospel lesson, Judas Iscariot cannot understand why Mary has wasted an entire vial of expensive perfumed oil by pouring it over a man’s feet. Yes, you and I… we know that this was not just any man, but who among the disciples really knew that this man was the Son of God… and genuinely worthy of the worship that Mary gave him? Was he really worth wasting a vial of perfume worth thousands of dollars? Yes. At face value, Judas was right. According to our text, that vial of perfumed oil was worth three hundred denarii … and one denari was a day’s wages for an ordinary working man. Three hundred denarii… almost year’s salary. That vial of perfumed oil was worth the equivalent of perhaps $20,000 to $30,000 in today’s money. That kind of money would feed a lot of hungry people… and wasn’t that what Jesus had been telling them to do throughout his ministry? Didn’t he tell the Rich Young Ruler to sell everything that he had and give it to the poor?
But no, this time Jesus tells Judas that Mary has done the right thing: She has taken the thing of greatest monetary value in her life and poured it out as an offering to her Lord. She has taken something that the rest of the world valued and given it all up to worship the One whom she valued… the One whom Jesus affirmed was worthy of her devotion… even though the rest of the world would think her a fool for doing so. Mary knew that this was her Savior and the Master of the Universe…the One who had just raised her beloved brother, Lazarus, from the dead. Yet how many of us, if confronted with the same situation, would respond in the same way that Judas did… angrily questioning why Mary was being so wasteful? We would all love to be able to say no… we would never do that. We would never act as Judas acted. We would somehow know that Jesus was our Lord and that it was appropriate for Mary to anoint his feet. Or would we? How many of us, when faced with important decisions in life, have chosen fool’s gold and discovered later that we should have made a different choice?
Back in 1976, Harry Chapin released a song that talked about a man’s inability to determine what was truly valuable in his life. Called “Cat’s in the Cradle,” the song talks about a workaholic father who continually neglects his relationship with his son and does not realize what he has done until his son grows up to be just like him… ignoring human relationships for career and job advancement. Do you remember the song? “My child arrived just the other day. He came to the world in the usual way, but there were planes to catch and bills to pay…” Do you remember? The man finally learns his lesson in the last stanza… “I’ve long since retired and my son’s moved away. I called him up just the other day. I said, “I’d like to see you, if you don’t mind.” He said, “I’d love to, Dad, if I could find the time. You see, my new job’s a hassle and the kid’s got the flu, but it’s sure nice talking to you, Dad. It’s been sure nice talking to you.” How do we know what is really important… what is really valuable in life? How do we choose?
In the year before I came to Stephenville, I worked in a hospice program. I was a chaplain with Lone Star Hospice and worked out of the Smithville, Texas, office. I spent all of my time with people who were dying and their families. Time after time, I listened to people share with me their regret about the choices they made in their lives and how they wished they had spent more time with family and friends… instead of sitting in front of their television sets and watching game shows… or sitcoms… or reality TV. How they wished that they had spent more evenings with their aging parents…before the medical crisis that precipitated hospice services. How they wished they had not wasted precious time in anger with their spouse over the unimportant things in life. How they wished they had hugged their son or daughter one more time.
There is a similar theme that runs through our passage from Philippians. Paul talks about all the things that he used to consider valuable: his ancestry… his heritage… his religion… his righteousness before the law and so on. He was an Israelite from birth… not a convert to Judaism… circumcised on the eighth day after his birth. He was a Hebrew of Hebrews… from the tribe of Benjamin… the tribe of King David… the tribe within whose boundaries lay the city of kings, Jerusalem itself. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees… blameless before the law. There was no one more worthy of honor among the Israelites than Paul. He was the best of the best.
But when Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus and came to understand what it meant to know Jesus and to be known by Jesus, he realized that all these other things that he had counted as so valuable were just rubbish. And the Greek word used here is much stronger than that. It can be translated trash… manure … pieces of dead, rotting corpses… excrement… all things that… in the Jewish religion… made a person unclean by simply coming in contact with them… things that were not only totally worthless in themselves, but made anyone who touched them worthless as well. Pretty strong words for those things that had been so important in his life before he met Christ.
Paul then goes on to say that he no longer strives to be righteous before the law, but instead, he desires the righteousness that comes only from God through the knowledge of Christ and faith in him. Paul says that he desires to know Christ… and the Greek word that he uses for knowing is gnosis… a word that communicates the knowledge of the mystery of the Divine. You might recognize it from the word Gnostics. The Gnostics were a religious sect that claimed to know a secret… a secret that only the Divine could share and that would only be shared with a limited number of humans. And Paul uses two different tenses of the word gnosis… one tense says that he wants to know Christ… to learn all that there is to know about Christ… and the other tense says that he wants to continue to know Christ and, thus, continue to learn the mysteries of the Divine, for he realizes that he can never know all there is to know about this great, wonderful, awesome, majestic God who has claimed him. Paul’s plan is to forget everything he ever knew and everything he ever thought was important… and to press on to the goal of the only prize in his life now… the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
Friends, we too have been called. We have been called by God and claimed as his own. Why do we allow ourselves to be distracted by the things that this world claims are valuable when the real prize is Christ and eternal life in his kingdom? I can promise you that, in all the conversations I have had with dying patients and their families, not one of those patients has regretted missing an episode of “Desperate Housewives.” Not one of them has ever mentioned wishing that they could have seen last week’s installment of “The Apprentice”… or even a college basketball tournament. Not one of them has wished that they could have spent more time at the office… or finished another stack of paperwork. What they have regretted is the time they did not spend with their families… the conversations they did not have with friends… and the opportunities to express their affection and love for those around them that they allowed to pass by without doing anything. What they have also regretted is the time they did not spend learning about Jesus… talking to God… listening to the breath of the Holy Spirit… and learning all there is to know… and continue learning… about this great, wonderful, awesome, majestic God who claimed them and who, for the most part, they ignored for most of their lives.
Do any of us know the measure of our days on this earth? Why do we waste the little time that we have chasing after those things that we can’t take with us anyway? I challenge each of us today to look at our own lives… and the things that we believe are important … and ask ourselves whether we are chasing after fool’s gold. Better that we pour all those things out at the feet of Jesus… as Mary did… and worship the One who has claimed us for a higher calling. If we look at life with the mind of Christ, then our eyes will see what Jesus sees… and what will become valuable in our eyes… will be that which is valuable is the eyes of Jesus himself. Isn’t all value truly in the eyes of the beholder? God grant that our eyes may be opened to see what Jesus sees. Amen.
John 12:1-8; Philippians 3:4b-14